


Keep Going

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Force (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Friendship, Gen, Possession, Sam Has a Healing Factor, Shatterstar Does The Thing, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 20:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16126427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Takes place immediately after Extermination #3. Sam blasts out of the X-Force jet yelling, "Ah'll handle Shatterstar." This is how Sam handles him.





	Keep Going

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently Sam's not an External but there's literally no other explanation for how he survived getting stabbed that time in X-Force so uh. He can heal. Yeah? Yeah.

Shatterstar fights Sam all the way to the ground, and blasting through a copse of trees somewhere along I-95 only somewhat deters him. He's still raving while his injuries heal, mechanically snapping broken bones back into place. 

Sam watches him warily across the clearing. “Shatty? You in there?”

Shatterstar growls, surging forward but stumbling on his broken leg. “Mutant,” he huffs wildly. “Kill the mutant.”

“Go ahead,” Sam says calmly, projecting his blast field around himself but forcing himself to remain on solid ground. “Ah’m invulnerable right now, Ah can take it. Whatever you need to do to get this outta your system, just do it, ’Star.”

Shatterstar howls and lunges forward, pivoting and slashing with no regard for his mangled leg. Sam dodges the blows, and when Shatterstar takes a swing at him his fist bounces off Sam’s blast field. 

“C’mon, fight that asshole,” Sam says, stepping around Shatterstar like they’re involved in some bizarre dance. “You’re a helluva lot stronger than Ahab, I know you are. He doesn’t get to control you. No one does.” 

The strange marks on Shatterstar’s face stand out harshly in the light from the highway. The lines are the same color as his star mark but they’re different, more off-putting. Ugly. The marks of a Hound, marks of possession and control and twisting good friends into enemies. 

“C’mon,” Sam says again, waiting to hear the thrumming of his teammate’s blades. It doesn’t come, and he wonders suddenly if Shatterstar can even use his powers in this condition. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he can, and he’s stopping himself, somehow. “Fight him, Shatterstar.” Shatterstar cries out and leaps forward again, but Sam ducks out of the way in time and Shatterstar’s swords sink into the tree that was behind Sam. ’Star hangs his head, panting hard. “Fight him!”

“I… am…” Shatterstar gasps out through gritted teeth, his hands wrapped tightly around the swords stuck in the tree. He pulls them out from the wood and whirls around, lurching toward Sam like a wild animal. “Kill… kill…”

“No, no, you had ’im a second ago,” Sam says, hoping he sounds encouraging and not just anxious and pissed off. “Get control back. Get it back.”

“K-kill…” Shatterstar repeats, his voice forced out from his tightly clenched jaw. “Kill me.  _ Kill me _ .” He surges toward Sam again, and Sam is so stunned he almost doesn’t move out of the way in time. Shatterstar skids around him and slides to a halt, breathing heavy. 

“No, Ah’m not gonna do that,” Sam says, hands twitching as he tries to keep from blasting away. “We’re gonna figure this out, me an’ you. That’s what we do. That’s X-Force.” 

“ _ No _ .” Shatterstar comes charging at him again, and this time Sam blasts away, just a few yards but enough. He hears Shatterstar stomping through the trees and underbrush to get to him. “You have to… you have to…” It’s like he’s managed to get control of his voice but he still can’t stop his body from attacking. “ _ I will not be a slave _ .”

“Yeah.” Sam jumps behind him and wraps his arms around Shatterstar’s shoulders, gets a good grip so his teammate can’t get away. “And you’re not dyin’, either. We’re gonna figure a way outta this.”

Shatterstar, as usual, has already figured his own way out.

He brings his double-bladed sword up and thrusts it through his own abdomen to get to Sam, and Sam remembers a second too late that Shatterstar’s swords can actually get through his blast field. 

He hears the awful  _ skekht  _ sound before he feels it, like a punch to the stomach. Getting stabbed always feels like getting punched, until the sudden warmth starts spreading across his stomach. Sam wishes that wasn’t something he knew from experience. 

Stunned, he drops Shatterstar and sinks to the ground, stretching back to lean against the tree trunk behind him. For a moment, Shatterstar looms above him, his sword bloody, his stomach sporting a wound that matches Sam’s. And then he also falls to the ground, slumped against Sam’s legs. 

It’s hard to say how much time passes, and Sam might have lost consciousness. But eventually, Shatterstar’s wounds start to heal and so do Sam’s, the muscles and skin knitting back together. Even better, the Hound marks on Shatterstar’s face fade and ultimately vanish. 

Finally, Shatterstar at least seems remotely lucid. “What happened?” he asked, looking dazedly around the woods, at his stomach, at his sword. 

“Some asshole tried to use you to kill Jean Grey,” Sam sighs, looking down with mild horror as his insides repair themselves. His stomach looks like ground beef. “Don’t worry. It’s okay now.” 

Shatterstar’s eyes widen in alarm. “I hurt you.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Sam says, waving his hand dismissively. “Look, Ah might not be an External, but Ah can take a hit. How bout you? Are you okay?”

Shatterstar looks down at his wound again. “The damage is moderate,” he says, his strange Mojoworld accent getting thicker, like it was when he was younger, which probably means he’s really messed up. “I will recover.” 

“Good,” Sam says, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Good, that’s good. See, we just gotta… gotta sit tight. The good thing is, you’re not jumpin’ around like a scalded dog anymore, so. Good to have you back, Shatty.” 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Shatterstar says solemnly. 

And Sam thinks about the fact that he just got skewered by a giant sword, not for the first time, and he’s sitting in the woods in Bum-Fuck Nowhere, New Jersey, and he and all his teammates can basically be triggered to turn into bloodthirsty mutant-hunting Hounds at any second… and all that still qualifies as “okay.”

Sam starts laughing and finds he can’t stop. Shatterstar turns and stares at him, panicked. “Sam? Why are you laughing?”

Sam shakes his head, laughing some more. “Because— Jesus— because when Ah first heard about Cable, Ah thought… ‘We can’t do this.’ Ah thought, ‘We can’t avenge him. We’re too old and outta practice, we’re not the same dumb kids were were when we first joined X-Force, there’s no way we can do this.’” He pauses to laugh again. “But look at us, Shatty. We still got it. We’re gonna be fine.”

When he starts laughing again, Shatterstar joins him, and even though they’re both still waiting on their healing factors to finish putting them back together they can’t stop laughing their heads off like the world isn’t going crazy around them. If anyone passing by happened upon them they might think Sam and Shatterstar were escapees from Murder World or something. 

In actuality, they’re just two friends who went through hell together only to find that hell just keeps going. But that’s okay. 

They’ll keep going, too.    
  



End file.
